Southeast Asian states Thursday adopted a common strategy to fight deadly epidemics such as Sars and bird flu, which have cost the region hundreds of lives and billions of dollars over the past two years.
But Malayian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek said details would only be released after approval by health ministers from China, Japan and South Korea, who are due to join the conference of the 10 member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) on Friday.
"The joint-declaration of the Asean health ministers has been adopted. It is aimed to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases. Diseases like Sars and bird-flu do not respect international borders," he said.
Wilfrido Villacorta, deputy Asean secretary-general told AFP that with the adoption of the plan, Asean would be better prepared to deal with future outbreaks.
"A mechanism has been developed to have a surveillance system to detect and to respond quickly to outbreaks. Basically, we are now better prepared to reduce damage. This is what we want," he said.
Earlier, the ministers were told that Asia faced the threat of more deadly epidemics such as SARS, which could have cost regional economies up to 50 billion dollars.
"New diseases like the bird flu and SARS have been emerging at the rate of one per year and the trend is certain to continue," said Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Najib said a recent survey showed the impact of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) so far on Asian economies was 10.6 billion dollars and could eventually total as much as 50 billion.
He gave no details, but SARS devastated the region's vital travel and tourism industries when it killed nearly 800 people and infected more than 8,000 in more than 30 countries last year, mostly in Asia.
A year after SARS spread from China, the World Health Organisation has warned that the deadly disease, like the outbreak this year of bird flu, remained a "major area of concern" and pointed to wild animals as the probable source of Sars transmission.
Comments
Comments are closed.